


not your tubbo.

by spillingsunlight (thesisean)



Series: it’s the meaning we all used to seek relentlessly for [1]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: 'your tubbo', :), Angst, Gen, Ghostbur, Light Angst, ghostyinnit, oops he's dead, tommy loses his final life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:48:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27927784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesisean/pseuds/spillingsunlight
Summary: tubbo sets out to find tommy, who's disappeared, vanished with no trace after his exile from new l'manburg. he finds tommy extremely dead, and back as a ghost. oh, and also the compass tightly gripped in tommy's translucent hand.
Relationships: Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit
Series: it’s the meaning we all used to seek relentlessly for [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2048441
Comments: 12
Kudos: 501





	not your tubbo.

**Author's Note:**

> vry short, lowercase intended.

he breaks free and runs.

he runs, gasping, stitches prickling heavily at his sides, runs until he collapses and his bruised bare hands come into contact with the ground. the neat suit he dons is fraying at the edges, coming apart in strands and tears from the harsh forests and lands. 

he doesn’t know where he’s running to. 

he knows what he’s running for.

tubbo scrambles to his feet and they feel heavy, too heavy for him to pick them up in a frantic lope towards god-knows-where, towards the ends of the earth, towards _him_. 

towards tommy. 

_(please be there. i can’t do this anymore if you aren’t. please.)_

the threat of one life left buzzes urgently, frazzled, a low buzz that lies below sensitive and bruised skin. he needs him. he needs tommy.

(tommy, i’m sorry for exiling you, where are you, where are you—)

he blinks away tears that swirl teasingly in his eyes. he doesn’t have time for them.

he feels it. tommy’s _near_. he has to be, with their special connection, how long they’ve stuck with each other. through wars, through adversaries. through each other. 

he didn’t want war. he isn’t schlatt. (is he? is he turning into schlatt slowly? is _tommy_ turning into wilbur?) he doesn’t want war. that’s one thing different about him and schlatt, right? 

_right?_ he shivers, leather shoes snagging on the thorns of vines that creeped across the forest floor. the discs poke at him through the thin material of his bag, the very discs that had brought them together. had. (they didn’t matter. they only controlled you if you let it have value.)

“tommy?” he rasps to the air, hot breaths ghosting his fragile skin, willing his body not to collapse, to shut down. god, his voice is fucking wrecked, cut down from a boisterous shout to a cracked whisper. 

a branch cracks under him, and he jolts, jerkily, runs dirt-covered fingers through hair slick with sweat. 

“tommy?” it’s a small one, not nearly loud enough to be heard. 

and there he is.

tommy. him, in his blonde glory and red-and-white shirt. the green bandana he’s given him long ago is wrapped not around his neck but knotted around a frail wrist. his blue eyes are clouded, and tubbo sees the cracks in his skin, the eye bags prominent below the clouded sapphires of his irises, the rips and tears in the once-pristine shirt. a shining enchanted compass lies in his pale palm, a red needle that points straight towards him. 

“tommy!” he nearly screams and his voice breaks off and cracks into a whisper, and he’s struggling towards tommy, tommy who makes no move to do the same, tommy who stands in front of him and stares.

he lunges for a tight desperate hug, and—

he falls through. his arms drift through tommy’s midriff like air. he doesn’t believe it, tries again. he feels tommy’s quizzical stare on his face. 

“...tommy?” he asks, and it’s pathetic, desperate. 

there’s a pause. tommy’s voice seems to hitch uncertainly (tommyinnit? _uncertain?)_. 

“the compass i have seems to point towards— point towards you, can you help me? i can't remember anything. when i woke up, all i had was this compass. who are you? can you help me?” 

the tears finally edge and tumble out his eyes and tubbo locks his gaze with tommy’s uncertain own. 

“you don’t remember me?” whispered. he thinks he’s struggling to breathe.

tommy purses cracked lips, shifts his gaze warily. it hurts. 

“were you important, to me? before i died?” 

the glint of the compass catches his eye, and he startles at the neat etched words, undoubtedly in the handwriting and craft of wilbur’s ghost. 

your tubbo.

_your tubbo._

“not his tubbo, anymore.” he laughs derisively at himself, loud, forcing his voice. “i’m not his tubbo, anymore.” 

tears fall faster, and he turns away from tommy’s ghost. tommy, who died alone, who died without himself by his side. _he doesn’t remember me, or anything, because everything wasn’t a good memory. i wasn’t a good memory._

he wasn’t a good memory. he knows perfectly well why. 

tommy stares expectantly at him, so much like the character he was when he’d introduced him to this newest latest world. 

“can you help me...? what’s your name?”

tubbo laughs, and nothing about his voice is light. 

“i’m tubbo. nice to meet you. i can lead you back to civilisation.” he says, and he sees tommy blink rapidly and a tired grin spread across his bright but injured disposition. 

“i think we’re going to be best friends, tubbo.” tommy declares, and tubbo can’t help but laugh at the exact same words he’d spouted a year ago. 

“best of friends.” tubbo promises, and he ignores his beating head and his throbbing heart as he fails to grab tommy’s hand and it goes right through. 

“come on,” he says, and he covers his turmoil and hurt under covers of big smiles and glitter-dusted words. “we’ve got friends to see.”

he leads tommy west, and he misses the sound of the compass _your tubbo_ fall and thump to the ground, laying forever amongst leaves and branches that would decompose and shed on top, covering the compass in an unintentional burial. of what had been. 


End file.
